[Mod] Alchemical Brewage

[Mobbstar]

Current Version: Forbidden Knowl Alchemy
 

 

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Content of this page

About
Preview
Download
Changelog
Inspirational Music

 

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About
 
This mod aims at adding fully customizable potions, which can consist of a wide range of effects. Ingredients often react in strange and inpredictable ways with each other, meaning that every recipe must be tested. For example, berries and meat are both rather boring ingredients on their own, but a potion bearing both developes an inflaming property and some buffs.
 
Certain combinations result in the creation of useful objects. To name an example, a mandrake and a seed form mandrake seeds. That isn't useful, since you only get one mandrake from that seed, but surely there's an alternative recipe.
 
I also do my best to maintain cross-mod support and seamless gameplay, so if you notice anything that could be smoothed or sanded, tell me!
 
Yes, I'll be making an unique poster of sorts for every content update. If you want to stay up-to-date, subscribe to this page using the top right button called "follow".
 

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Preview
 
You can craft two three new things: the Alchemical Distiller and the Homebrewn (not yet brewn) Potion and the potion spitter (for remote applying)

 
In the Distiller, there's an ingredient and a potion slot. Place a potion in the bottom one, and anything in the top one. If the "brew" button lights up, you can brew a potion!

 
Potions have different colours and descriptions. This is unrelated to their content, and can be disabled if you don't want it.

 
Try to discover useful effects! This is the first step to learning great recipes!

 
Potions can be smashed by giants or shot using the potion spitter, so there aren't "useless" potions!

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Download
 
Klei forums
Steam
 

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Changelog

• minor bug fixes
• minor grammar fixes
• minor content leaks

• Update title: Forbidden Alchemy
• Added "Philosophers Stone"
• Since 1.1.3, it generates in the ruins
• It allows you to read potion data
• It's not always safe to use
• Added Midas' Essence
• Added Helios' Spirit
• Both of the above need to be hammered
• Added some important ingredients
• General improvements

• Update title: Gaining Steam!
• now with Steam Workshop version
• more ingredients
• added tater grenade
• fixed freeze bug with thorns effect
• fixed ice immunity causing neverending frozen state
• fixed general weirdness when drinking the same potion twice

• Update title: Pieces are Set!
• Added set piece(s)
• including traps 'n' stuff
• If using "Tomes of Knowledge", both new boons come with a collection of potion recipes each
• 1.1
• Update Title: Drink in Moderation!
• Added swigs (a potion can be sipped twice now)
• Added the potion spitter, a new item to apply potions to other creatures
• Fixed other creatures not saving their active potion effects properly
• Tentacle spikes can be synthetised
• Saplings can be synthetised
• Tallbird eggs can be synthetised
• Metal (from Steam Biome mod) can (probably) be synthetised
• Several existing items are now potion ingredients
• Improved Regeneration/Poison/Acid, so they don't make sounds everytime your health changes
• Miscellanious bug fixes
• Probably some minor changes I totally forgot and now take for granted

• 1.0
• Update Title: Transmutation!
• Finally fixed Save/Load of consumed potions
• If the right ingredients are added, you will now obtain special items
• Mandrake seeds can be synthetised
• Poop can be synthetised
• Gold can be synthetised
• Nightmare fuel can be synthetised
• Improved effects
• More effects
• More ingredients
• Made most effects more obvious
• Miscellanious bug fixes
• Beta Release 2
• Data overhaul
• Few more ingredients
• Way more effects, all working this time
• Still no save/load of potion effects with duration though, sry

• Beta Release 1

 

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Inspirational Music

 

For when you need some awesome choir or alike to underline your fierce and dark research...

http://syntheticorchestra.com/covers/?search=Fullmetal%20Alchemist

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100632

Edited September 13, 2015 by Mobbstar

[Mobbstar]

Update released! V 1.1 brings new means to use potions, and a few more ingredients to make useful potions!

 

Please leave any thoughts and impressions so I can improve annoyances and squash potential bugs!

[Asparagus]

I ran out of likes...

 

 

Hmm... the art style doesn't really feel DS enough... but I suck at art so much... who am I to say?

 

Probably make this one of Wilson's thing cuz... the whole Gentleman Scientist thing

 

I approve

[Mobbstar]

Updated to 1.1.1 "Pieces are Set!"

 

This update sadly didn't bring any cool new ingredients yet, but at least you can now find up to two new boons when generating new worlds! If you use the Tomes of Knowledge mod when generating the world, those locations will spawn with two different kinds of recipe collections.

[Mobbstar]

Updated to 1.1.2 "Gaining Steam!"

 

Yes there's a Steam Workshop version now! Also I fixed a bunch of bugs that haven't been reported yet for some odd reason.

[Estel]

First of all - awesome idea! I really like how it follows the "non-hand-holding" scheme, requiring to experiment. I hope for it to be kept non-over powered, though, i.e. the more useful the potion is, the harder to get ingredients - and nothing that would make game a cakewalk, of course.

A couple of suggestions:

1. I would suggest adding Mandrake as the material for building Alchemical Distiller. Now, building it is a little too easy (spiky mace can be found by just a visit to swamps, not necessary fighting anything - 99% of time there will be some lying on the ground already, as a result of merms<->spiders<->tentacles wars. Also, there is hanged mandrake on the graphic, so...

2. Why colors and descriptions are totally unrelated to what was used for making potion? It would be fine, if we could memorize them (or write down, for example, it's smell description) the potion. Same for colour - thing made from same ingredients should result in same-looking and smelling potion, right?

3. Maybe it is implemented already, but it would be nice (if possible) to make *some* potions give special results, when brew during special time. For example, during full or new moon. Or on certain phases of magic cycle, in the ruins.

4. It would be fun, if must potions would have *both* positive and negative effects, forcing you to use one depending on situation - without potions "good for every time" (or just keeping the latter as quite weak ones).

Cheers,
/Estel

[Mobbstar]

First of all - awesome idea! I really like how it follows the "non-hand-holding" scheme, requiring to experiment. I hope for it to be kept non-over powered, though, i.e. the more useful the potion is, the harder to get ingredients - and nothing that would make game a cakewalk, of course.

 

Thank you! It's great to receive constructive and well-thought criticism. Of course I try to keep things balanced, and abundant resources like petals are far weaker (usually also worse).

 

Some / A bunch / A few suggestions:

1. I would suggest adding Mandrake as the material for building Alchemical Distiller. Now, building it is a little too easy (spiky mace can be found by just a visit to swamps, not necessary fighting anything - 99% of time there will be some lying on the ground already, as a result of merms<->spiders<->tentacles wars. Also, there is hanged mandrake on the graphic, so...

The problem with that is, there's not even a hand full of mandrakes in the world, and (without the distiller) there's no way of repopulating them. Maybe I will replace the petals with blue mushrooms though, so you have to work in the night.

 

2. Why colors and descriptions are totally unrelated to what was used for making potion? It would be fine, if we could memorize them (or write down, for example, it's smell description) the potion. Same for colour - thing made from same ingredients should result in same-looking and smelling potion, right?

That is a bit of a technical difficulty, actually. How should the game decide what colour or description to use?

 

I could make a huge decision tree that analyzes the potions effects and evaluates their intensity and/or reads ingredient tags and their count.

 

I could also rename potions depending on their effects, and leave colour/descriptions as it is. I could allow people to rename potions too.

 

Lastly, I could invent some crazy way of displaying potion effects. I definitely want to do that, but at the moment I think that's a bit OP and should be some secret device in the ruins.

 

What is your opinion on that?

 

3. Maybe it is implemented already, but it would be nice (if possible) to make *some* potions give special results, when brew during special time. For example, during full or new moon. Or on certain phases of magic cycle, in the ruins.

 

That sounds awesome! I hadn't considered weather effects, but now I want to make it a thing.

 

4. It would be fun, if must potions would have *both* positive and negative effects, forcing you to use one depending on situation - without potions "good for every time" (or just keeping the latter as quite weak ones).

 

Keeping the concept in mind, there's nothing that makes potions have both good and bad effects. Ingredients, however, usually bear several effect trees (that have individual turns and twists) or "layers" of help- and harmful effects. So unless you find an (plentyful) ingredient that naturally works well for you, you have to risk reactions using unrelated or even counter-intuitive effects.

[Estel]

Thank you! It's great to receive constructive and well-thought criticism.

I'm absolutely certain that your mods deserve even more attention that they're getting already - it's absolutely awesome work (Industrial Resolution and this). Really fitting for "full of science and magic". I'm really glad if any of my suggestions result in something productive.

 

 

The problem with that is, there's not even a hand full of mandrakes in the world, and (without the distiller) there's no way of repopulating them. Maybe I will replace the petals with blue mushrooms though, so you have to work in the night.

That could work too, either night or waiting for a full moon.

I still think that Mandrake would work well, though - *especially* for the reason that there is so few of them. Either you get lucky, find one *and* take precautions to re-populate them (sacrificing one to make the Distiller, with possibility to get it back by dismantling structure), or if you have "wasted" them - need to change world (which would be good way of encouraging doing it - people almost never change worlds). Otherwise, it would be good reason to start exploring wast world (and take nose out of own, well-defended camp) for that legendary philosophical stone of alchemists (Mandrake) Either way, it would make brewing potions a high-tier thing.

Or - last but not least - best of both world, aka allowing it to be configured from mod options, like "distiller build cost: easy, medium, hard", with easy being as it is now, medium the blue mushroom thing, and hard requiring mandrake. People could tweak it to their liking.

 

 

I could make a huge decision tree that analyzes the potions effects and evaluates their intensity and/or reads ingredient tags and their count.

That would be awesome and IMO best, but I imagine that it could be quite a work to code, actually. What I was thinking about, was giving the potion made of same ingredients (and during same "conditions") = the same potions = always the same colour and description (two different potions could have same colour, but different description, or same description and different colour). So, it would work just like crock-pot on "steroids" - initially, you have no idea what results to expect from your mixes, but that would change with experience. I think that  streamlining colour's description just saved player wondering "what that potion was doing" 10 days after brewing it (if he memorized colour/description, that is, otherwise, it would still be mystery).

 

 

Lastly, I could invent some crazy way of displaying potion effects. I definitely want to do that, but at the moment I think that's a bit OP and should be some secret device in the ruins.

That would definitely fit the ruins well.

 

 

That sounds awesome! I hadn't considered weather effects, but now I want to make it a thing.

Hah, I haven't considered weather effects (like, brewed during storm) too, but it is, actually very good extensions of the idea - not only moon/magic cycle, also weather, temperature... All the possibilities of brewing things in all special circumstances...   Sounds great!

/Estel

Edited June 11, 2015 by Estel

[Mobbstar]

Updated to 1.2 "Forbitten Knowl Alchemy"

 

You know can inspect potion effects in the ruins, as suggested above. The object to do so it found in a very far away part of the ruins though, so good luck finding it!

 

There's now more nick nack to be brewn. The new special potions have unique effects upon being hammered.

 

As always, tell me if I messed up somewhere. I need not explain that I did general bug fixes and stuff, do I?

[Estel]

I'm having really, really big fun testing potions and their effects (imagine my reaction when distilling "this" and mixing it with "that" resulted in... thulecite fragments. Much, much more fun, than farming tumbleweeds for green gems and constructing/deconstructing thulecite suits!). Hoever, i fail to grasp some of graphical indications.

For example, distilling

mosquito blood sacks

and drinking them just after it resulted in minor sanity loss, and red shields floating around player. I got it that it should mean weaking some stats (just as yellow shield mean stats increase, right?), but trying to fight something haven't given me any clues what could be changed. as the effect just that subtle, or using philosopher's stone is only way to determine what happened?

/Estel

[Mobbstar]

I'm having really, really big fun testing potions and their effects (imagine my reaction when distilling "this" and mixing it with "that" resulted in... thulecite fragments. Much, much more fun, than farming tumbleweeds for green gems and constructing/deconstructing thulecite suits!). Hoever, i fail to grasp some of graphical indications.

For example, distilling

mosquito blood sacks

and drinking them just after it resulted in minor sanity loss, and red shields floating around player. I got it that it should mean weaking some stats (just as yellow shield mean stats increase, right?), but trying to fight something haven't given me any clues what could be changed. as the effect just that subtle, or using philosopher's stone is only way to determine what happened?

/Estel

 

lol red doesn't always mean "strong" or "pain". I recommend you to play around with every red-ish thing that could potentially harm you until you know what the shields do.

 

But honestly, I've hit a brick wall with this mod. You just mentioned it too: It's impossible to tell whether the potions even do anything, and if, then the effects are often obscure or hidden by more imposing effects. Also, to be honest, many users are not as eager or curious as you are; The problem is much bigger than what you are experiencing.

 

I can't think of a good solution to this. The entire essence of A-Brew is to let the player experiment with things to see what happens. Right now the player doesn't see what happens, barely that something happens. If I add some automatic logbook, it either records the effects of the ingredients (which would quickly destroy the uncertainity that fuels experimentation) or the potions' effects (which encourages number-crunching over experimentation, not to mention the insane amounts of data that would be accumulated over time).

 

The ancient stone thing was a crude attempt at opening a risky window to see what effects the are to begin with, and whether there is some hidden effect left. Needless to say, it's not risky at all once you manage to get there once.

 

So here's a question: If there was some notebook (presumably requiring ToK mod) that would do nothing other than listing the effects you have experienced on your own body once (and what indicates it), would that be helpful? Would it be overpowered?

 

I added the question to the poll btw, you can simply tick an option instead of replying

[Estel]

Just for the record - if you ever voted in the first part of the poll, you need to delete your vote, and then vote for both parts.
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I understand your dilemma here. DS is all about experimenting and discovering things, so current situation with potions is not different. OTOH, people got so used to just check mysteries on the wiki, that returnign to pure experimentation is hard for some.

Personally, I think that logbook that - upon drinking a potion - would record the final effects *and* the ingredients used, would be great. It wouldn't spoil the fun as it would be the case with listing what effects ingredients itself have, and would allow to determine that by comparing different results of potions brewed with combination of given resources. (so player himself can get idea that component type A usually gives property type Z, etc).

BTW, for every alchemical book that I've found, I screenshoot'ed all content, just like i memorize or write down recipes that I discover by experimentation (and write down potions). So, having it logged automatically - in my case - would just replace swapping desktops into Leafpad and writing down resulting potion myself. I guess that for some, simple option to turn off loging feature might be OK to have.

/Estel

[Mobbstar]

Personally, I think that logbook that - upon drinking a potion - would record the final effects *and* the ingredients used, would be great. It wouldn't spoil the fun as it would be the case with listing what effects ingredients itself have, and would allow to determine that by comparing different results of potions brewed with combination of given resources. (so player himself can get idea that component type A usually gives property type Z, etc).

 

I'm sorry, but I specifically did not add that to the poll because it would break the mould. The average person doesn't stop at twenty or thirty different potions (or at least I want it to be like that). Recording such a large amount of data would hit the computer systems somewhat hard, evenmore so the actual useability of that log. Imagine you had a potion log with roughly 100 potions and want to compare to figure out the effects of pomegranate. With the current means, that'd be near impossible and frustrate the player even more.

 

There's a finite count of...

• potion effects. Every ingredient is assembled from predefined effects that could be explained as they're encountered.
• ingredients. Admittedly, there's gonna be a lot of them. But even then every page is going to be rather useful, and there won't be obvious or redundant pages.
• potion names. Every potion has a random name based on the main effect, and a description based on the second strongest effect. A page for each effect could contain the possible names and descriptions.

At least that's all I could think of. If you have a better idea for an automated brewing logbook, please tell me. Else I'll have to retreat to setpieces or alike to introduce more guide books.

 

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And on a side note, I'll probably introduce more content that is available without the distiller needed, but must be brewn properly for high-end transmutables.

Edited August 15, 2015 by Mobbstar

[Estel]

Well, i think that listing exact effects of every ingredient would "kill the magic" of checking in what unexpected ways certain ingredients act with each other. OTOH, the set pieces with more alchemy books is good idea - but it would be great, to have some spawn only in hard-to-reach places.

/Estel

[Estel]

Ps.
I've noticed that every character got own messages about alchemical things, except my favorite character, Wigfrid, that uses generic (Wilson's) ones. Most of the times, it doesn't fit character, at all - why Wigfrid is neglected?

Edited August 16, 2015 by Estel

[Mobbstar]

Updated to fix some negligible bugs.

 

no teasers leaks included.